Spectrum 123. I might have been put in the workhouse

Rights Information
Year
1975
Reference
27203
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1975
Reference
27203
Media type
Audio
Categories
Biographical radio programs
Documentary radio programs
Nonfiction radio programs
Radio programs
Sound recordings
Duration
00:26:55
Credits
RNZ Collection
Weddell, Jessica, 1926-1997, Presenter
Holmes, Alice, Interviewee
National Radio (N.Z.) (estab. 1986, closed 2007), Broadcaster

Jessica Weddell talks to Alice Holmes about her childhood in Edwardian England, her work in service and her daughter's death during a polio outbreak in Britain in the 1950s..

Her father died while she was nine years old and living in Chesterfield, near Birmingham. Her mother wasn't able to take care of them with no income and abandoned them for the United States. An aunt put her in an orphanage in Bristol with her sisters. They were very happy at the orphanage, despite having to work hard in the laundry. The only book they were allowed was the Bible, but any others they were sent were given to them when they left the orphanage.
When she left she went into service as a housemaid to Reverend Ormiston of St Mary's in Berkeley Square, Bristol. The Reverend was very kind, although she only was paid nine pounds for a year's work.
She left because of the low pay and went to work in service in Birmingham for a Mrs Hahn. Then during World War I she went to Liverpool where she worked as a valet for a Jewish businessman who was unable to find a man to do the job because of the war. She was very ignorant about sex and was raped by a man one Sunday.
Eventually the valet returned from the Front and she was out of a job. She was sent to do war work in a factory and went to Wolseley Motors in Birmingham, where she met her husband, who she married in 1923.
She had two daughters, one of whom Marion, died in 1950 in Britain of polio at the age of 21. She describes the suddenness of the polio and Marion's death.